Friday, October 15, 2010

PHP Strengths and Weaknesses

For a web site to be competitive today, it must be interactive, dynamic, and capable of performing on-line transactions. Gone are the days, when entire web sites were created using static pages. Today, web developers are using tools and programming languages to help them create customized web pages, develop shopping cart applications, and track user's behaviors. To meet these development challenges, this paper will examine the strengths and weakness of one of the latest programming languages used to create dynamic web pages known as 'PHP Hypertext Preprocessor' (PHP). This software, originally known as Personal Home Pages, was developed in 1997 and is currently being used in over 10 million domains.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

JED Editor's Picks Nominations - One Week Only!

The Joomla! Extensions Directory Team is proud to announce a new set of guidelines for the once Top Secret Editor's Picks!  With no new selections since 2008 and only 8 current listings, it's was past time to review our procedures and add new ones.  ThroughoutEditor's Picks discussions many ideas were brought up on how to handle the selection process.  To bring in community involvement, a nomination form has now been created.  The criteria for selection is listed on the nomnation form below.  The nomination process closes in 7 days, so make sure to get yours in quickly!
Selections will be announced by the end of October 2010 and the process will repeat every 6 months.  If an Editor's Picks is currently listed, that does not mean that it will be listed in the new round of selections.  Additionally, team members with listings in the directory have self-excluded from the selection process.  You may nominate as many as you wish!
A total selection of up to 60 Editor's Picks will be chosen (about 1% of the entire listings).
Happy nominating and good luck!
or
(Please note, blog comments will not be processed, discussion areas are available in the J!People site.)

source: http://community.joomla.org/blogs/leadership/1313-jed-editors-picks-nominations-one-week-only.html

JPEG / PNG Image Resizer using PHP script

PEG / PNG Image Resizer
Parameters (passed via URL):

img = path / url of jpeg or png image file

percent = if this is defined, image is resized by it's
          value in percent (i.e. 50 to divide by 50 percent)

w = image width

h = image height

constrain = if this is parameter is passed and w and h are set
            to a size value then the size of the resulting image
            is constrained by whichever dimension is smaller

Requires the PHP GD Extension

Outputs the resulting image in JPEG Format

By: Michael John G. Lopez - www.sydel.net
Filename : imgsize.php

Download PHP Script:
https://sites.google.com/site/myblogfileattachments/home/Files/imgsize.php

PC World features eBay using Joomla!

The October 7, 2010 online edition of PC World magazine features an article titled EBay Deploys Joomla! for Analytics Portal. This article highlights the recent announcement that the online auction giant (who claims to run the largest commercial data warehouse in the world) has chosen to use the Joomla! framework as platform for a set of internal data analysis tools that will be accessible by the company's 16,400 employees.
Here is an excerpt from this PC World article:
eBay has always made it a key priority to encourage employees to collaborate and drive business innovation," said Bob Page, eBay analytics platform vice president, in a statement. "We are working with the open source community to elevate insightful ideas and innovations across our company, from our greatest resources, our employees.
More information on how eBay is working with Joomla! may be found in these team blogs:

How do you put a module inside an article?

You will usually want to associate modules with articles in some way. The modules are allocated to module positions and the module positions appear somewhere on the Web page as determined by the template. However, it is sometimes useful to have a module actually embedded within the article.
To insert a module inside an article, use the {loadposition xx} command, as follows:
  1. Create a module and set its position to any value that doesn't conflict with an existing template position. You can type in the position value instead of selecting it from the drop-down list. For example, use the position myposition.
  2. Assign the module to the Menu Items that contain the articles that you want the module to show in. You can also just assign the module to all Menu Items.
  3. Edit the articles where you want this module to appear and insert the text {loadposition myposition} in the article at the place where you want the module.
Note that this only works when the Content - Load Module plugin is enabled. If this plugin is disabled, the text {loadposition myposition} shows unchanged in the article..

source:http://docs.joomla.org/How_do_you_put_a_module_inside_an_article%3F

IIS6 and SEF URLs using Joomla 1.5x

There are several steps one must take to get Search Engine Friendly (SEF) URLs to work properly when using Joomla! on Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) web servers. The following instructions should result in functional SEF URLs using Joomla! 1.5 and IIS6. The only caveat is that you need access to the server itself to install the ISAPI filter in step 1, so either you should be hosting your own server (not shared) or leasing a dedicated server from your web host. If you're using shared hosting, you will have to convince your web host to install it for you.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

eBay Chooses Joomla!

We're delighted to report that eBay put out the following press release today. They will be using Joomla for an enterprise-level internal project. They're also the hosts of Joomla Day West which is taking place at their San Jose, California campus today.
San Jose, Calif. – Oct. 1, 2010eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY), the world’s largest online marketplace, today announced an agreement to use Joomla, the most popular open source content management system (CMS), to launch a community portal as part of eBay's internal analytics platform. eBay is leveraging open source for employees and supports an ongoing commitment to driving innovation across the business.
Known as “community analytics,” the initiative will be accessible by eBay’s 16,400 employees, and will incorporate social aspects of active collaboration, including content creation, sharing and open discussion. Joomla CMS supports eBay’s expansion of community-oriented knowledge sharing and information discovery.

“eBay has always made it a key priority to encourage employees to collaborate and drive business innovation,” said Bob Page, eBay vice president, analytics platform, “We are working with the open source community to elevate insightful ideas and innovations across our company, from our greatest resources, our employees.”
With the largest commercial data warehouse in the world, more than 100 times larger than the Library of Congress, eBay requires immense computing capabilities to mine and decipher actionable data. The new community analytics initiative enables employees to source and analyze massive amounts of data to power ideas and learning across the company. eBay will also contribute back to the open-source community.
“eBay is a welcomed addition to the Joomla open source community,” said Ryan Ozimek, president of Open Source Matters, a not-for-profit created to provide organization, legal, and financial support to the Joomla project. “With such a large data demand, eBay is pioneering open-source employee-based projects for the enterprise.”
The announcement coincides with Joomla Day USA West 2010 being held on the eBay/PayPal North campus in San Jose, Calif. today through Sunday, Oct. 3. The event is showcasing the latest developments and best practices within the Joomla open source community, including a speech from Oliver Ratzesberger, senior director of analytics platform at eBay.

Source: